Medievalcore Takes the Spotlight In Mixed Feelings’s First Print Issue

Throw on your chainmail and fasten your armor because medievalism — medievalcore, if you will — is here in full force. Knightly characters have walked the runways of Dior Cruise, Ann Demeulemeester, and Burberry, while that VMAs performance last September still sticks around in our minds. Across these realms of style, beauty, and pop culture, aesthetics pulled straight from the Middle Ages are clearly having quite a URL-to-IRL moment, and youth culture newsletter Mixed Feelings tackles them head-on in its first print issue, “The Medievalist.”

Released today, August 15, online and at Soho News International, the limited-run magazine navigates this current cultural moment of medievalcore through stories on everything from the rise of romantasy novels and idolatry to renaissance faire-ifying one’s wardrobe. At the center of it all is a style story and photoshoot that reimagines makeup artist Anya Tisdale as a centuries-old archetype, candelabras abound. Clad in metal-plated garb and layered ruffles, Tisdale exists somewhere between knight in shining armor and glammed-up pagan sprite. “It felt intuitive to dedicate our first issue to all things medieval,” Mixed Feelings editorial director Amalie MacGowan tells Teen Vogue. Call it chivalry-chic.

Through metallic accents and a combination of pressed and liquid eyeshadows, Tisdale embodies a moment where styles past and present have melded together to create something new. “What if instead of being peasants who only wear beige, we were fae creatures who wore Taottao? What if we were knights who carried trinkets on our swords?,” Mixed Feelings art director Logan Tsugita asks. “Maybe we want an excuse to escape our reality through playing pretend knights and fairies,” they continue, “or maybe we’re living through such a dystopian time politically, that we’re subconsciously reflecting our worst fears of our rights being sent back in time into our art.”

Amidst times of great uncertainty, it feels second-nature to embrace fantasy, and “The Medievalist” refuses to shy away from such. “World building is an essential part of what makes Mixed Feelings, Mixed Feelings,” says Mi-Anne Chan, the newsletter’s founding editor. “It feels like an amalgamation of past, present, and future Mixed Feelings: pure fantasy with a touch of mischief, just how we like it.”

You can shop Mixed Feelings's “The Medievalist” issue here.